Poseidon, the Wolfgang Peterson directed remake of 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, represents a lot of what's wrong with Hollywood today. It's a vast, mega budget action movie with a (mostly) B-list cast, zero characterisation with no originality in its bones whatsoever. Although it's a reimagining of the Irwin Allen produced disaster movie classic, it feels like a cynical cash-in on Titanic, then the biggest film of all time. And since that's directed to brilliant effect by the master James Cameron, Poseidon comes off as a less involving, but just as visually spectacular knock off instead.
Gene Hackman's commanding preacher is replaced by Kurt Russell's fireman come politician and Josh Lucas' loner. While I love Russell's work he's no match for Hackman's superior, more complex hero and let's just say I'm glad Hollywood stopped trying to make Josh Lucas a star. He has that youthful arrogance of a young Pierce Brosnan which makes him unappealing and cocky...something age will temper as it did in Brosnan's case. Kevin Dillon gets the antagonistic Ernest Borgnine role but gets killed off way too early to create any sustained tension...and the remainder of the cast, including the normally value-for-money Richard Dreyfuss, are forgettable disaster movie fodder.
Still, if you can rely on Wolfgang Peterson and Warner Bros' cheque book for one thing...the film sure do look good. It has a slick contemporary sheen, at least making it a different visual pallet from Titanic and some astoundingly detailed ILM effects (the Poseidon flyby of the main titles is gorgeous).
Poseidon is the Paris Hilton of blockbusters; pretty on the outside and eager to please, but with the make-up off it's very plain with absolutely nothing going on in it's tiny brain.
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